trabajamos para ella !

anything to add to fantastic mr.gaudi ?

Technology , techniques , styles and rest of the jazz

Random thoughts o design , algorithms , technology , techniques

_sequence of actions vs sequence of snapshots.

"one of the first important paradigm shifts that programmers struggle to make is from viewing an algorithm as a sequence of actions to viewing it as a sequence of snapshots of the state of the computer." jeff edmonds , How to think about algorithms

Personally I think the latter is particularly useful in "design computing" , when the result desired is not known in exactitude . Once the snapshots are somewhat outlined, we can proceed to flesh out the design algorithm with operations to get from one state to another....

This inclination betrays a huge persnoal reliance on being able to use modelling techniques to "think-through" an algorithm .. i.e get from one state to another..

(to be continued..)

aa dlab_09

UNIT | TUTORS
Chikara Inamura and Shajay Bhooshan : ZHA Architects, london.

Primary software used : Catia and Maya.

UNIT | PARTICIPANTS
( some surnames to be corrected soon!)
Amorph
LorenzoPoli _PeyLingWeng _MariaEugeniaVillafane _IoannaSymeonidou
1+4
DenisLacej _PanizPeivandi _GeorgiosManousis _YijunHuangor _ RevanosAtria
Scuba
ManmitJandu _ThomasLegleu _MengTang _KnutBrunier _ Mohamed
Soda
JadalLeon _RicardoSosa _AliNahmad _Jheny _Fernando

UNIT | AGENDA
This unit focuses on scripting in the process of interoperability through various stages of architectural design from concept sketches to downstream production. The intention is to initiate participants into a compressed version of design-production pipeline in contemporary architectural practices.
...with conceptual design exercises featuring the use physics solvers, systematic study of parameters and results, establishing numerical methods to evaluate design goals etc.
...then focus on materialization through feasibility tests using finite element analysis and assembly modeling, where conceptual design parameters are transferred into material property, such as thickness, gauges, transparency, color, etc.

blade !

code maquette

original video at 18-45 fps.

_ reference source code : locomotion / kinematics
levFlagellum: by Jared Tarbell / Roberrt Hodgin (flight404).

_Individual creatures follow a assigned 'target' using simple Lerp.
_ Individuals also query a vector from a 'field' - simple-hash: - to alter their trajectory.
A percentage factor decides at each time-step whether individuals follow their targets or the vector field.
This percentage is a function of 'similarity of attributes' between targets and individuals.

Initial attempts involved generating the 'vector-field' from images as in these reference images from mantissa.
Later switched to using Maya-fluid field since Maya fluids are multi-threaded and sooo much faster than any code I can cobble together.

_ stipple lines represent iso-contours through changing scalar field
.i.e the attributes of the individuals - speed, similarity to each other etc - enabling a simplistic visualisation of clustering.

_ completely botched the visuals..hence the greyscale vdo!

more OF - maya attempts : Webcams , blob detection , sprites , billBoarding

videois real-time

(edit :)This looks like a much better idea!
wiimote + maya camera.

webcam,blob detection

_classes
OF: web-cam, blob detection classes (ofxOpenCV), video classes.
Maya : camera, quaternion & Euler rotation, vector and matrix, image classes.

_Maya-OF communication .

method 1.
Thanks to Dr. Woohoo and Keith Pasko for tip / how-to, including tweaks to ofxTCPClient.cpp

use ofxTCPClient to call MEL commands/procedures externally.

method 2.
Maya external browser setup registers a Maya COM object with default web browser, and all calls to URLS prefixed with mel:// are routed to the Maya script editor.

Uses ofUrlLaunch to call URLs (MEL commands / procedures).

This method fails under specific combinations of OS, browser and Maya version (e.g: Windows 7 + Maya08 + firefox3). This is because, the version of the COM browser plug-in fails to register.

_attempt was to use only the bounding box of the 'blob' of the hand. Tried very simple gestures like rotation of wrist, left-right & up-down motion of hand to track / zoom a Maya camera.
For various reasons, least of which is the amateur nature of code-writing, the interaction wasn't smooth / controllable.

bill-boarding

Although in-built Maya particle engine supports sprites / true billboarding , there is minimal API access to this. The custom node uses Maya quaternion and matrix classes to reconstruct this functionality. Also enables control over 'amount of bill-boarding' / scaling using 'fall-off' curves. Custom node uses Maya image class and OF video classes to load and display images / video respectively.

Springs and Particles : initiation to a home-brew Solver

Its a bit dissappointing that the Nucleus solver (nCloth / nParticles) in Maya09 has very limited API access and thus I have trying to learn the anatomy of a solver - particles , springs, methods of integration et al - and these are very good references with source code:

memo : uses verlet integration
Traer : Runge kutte and Euler integration
toxi: verlet
Zach lieberman: Introduction to basic principles and hardware connections.

Many thanks to the good people who have give out source code!

Squid ne 1? : more WIP :

maya-isoSurface node: wip

OF-maya-p5 conxns

details:
_object duplication and data-maps.
Input polygon has 20 faces with the bottom face removed. Each instance stores two transform matrices: one for border vertices and the other for the inner vertices.These matrices are gradually changed across the field as a weighted mean of various parameters such as area of quad-face they occupy, the distance of the face-center to the colored lines, a vector field acquired from the Maya fluid algorithm, etc.

_communication / network:
The processing/ touch screen application and the Maya application run communicate through UDP ports. Maya :OF UDP wrappers inside a Maya dll. p5 : hypermedia UDP libraries..The rather pathetic 10-12 fps of the 3d side of things results in communication being out of sync. Current fix is a buffering window that keeps watch and sends event messages to the Maya commandport, thus also helping trigger the entire dependency graph(image above).

_opengl:
significant factors to the rather slow fps :
a. making / maintaining a Maya mesh object.(0.05 seconds/cycle) required only in case a rendered output is necessary.
b. shading the mesh with shared vertex normals (0.05 s / cycle).
haven't a clue how to calculate this myself, hence requiring mesh object above.
c.immediate mode gl shading:
Thanks to memo will look into vertex arrays/vbos et al.

So almost all factors are my owning making. time to starting cleaning the mess.

Video from recent OF workshop exercise in London that I had the good fortune of participating. Mad props for Memo , Joel Lewis, Ruairi Glynn and Marek Bereza.I tried to transcode the beautifully simple code levFlagellum: by Jared Tarbell / Roberrt Hodgin (flight404).I was also trying to learn some openGL glow/blur techniques....managed only to get some FBO down-sample tricks for simple glow. Hopefully someday soon properbloom techniques will be within grasp.

GLSL and Maya

Videois in real-time

Ability to render size-able number of dynamic objects could be one of many reasons contributing to the growing popularity of Processing/OF amongst code-savvy, experimental architects. Unfortunately, this ability is not coupled with easy-to-use geometric operations.(Potential integration with Java libraries notwithstanding i.e.) . Wonder then, if with the addition of python script and API to Maya, there might be a 'scripted' method to register openGL callbacks within Maya nodes /DG ? Thus leveraging drawing capacities of openGL and the geometric capacities Maya.

Images/video below: early attempts to add a preview shaded mode for Large object population in Maya. The inclusion on smooth-mesh preview since Maya2008 has already eased many a work-flow.

branching:wip2

Video is in real-time
Maya c++ node based on hierarchical bundling algorithm, developed by Danny Holten and described here . Implementation of the algorithm was used by Manuel lima of visual-complexity to elegant effect here .

Curve straightening (see video) is lame attempt based on local weights only.Hence doesn't 'hold' original shape very well. Probably needs 'pinning'/anchoring of some cvs.duno.will fight that battle another day.yet another battle-for-another-day: spring based curve-relaxing.

branchingNode:WIP

towerNode:wip

video is in real-time

_parametric setup:

inputs:
envelope curve.

controls parameters | floorPlates:

_custom wire deformers, that keep floor plates flat as also manipulate form.
_floor-flot height: gradient ramp control
_division of each floor plates into num parts.
etc

controls parameters | skin:
_quad panelling accounts for mullion widths
_ attractors
etc.

eval metrics:
_ floor area
_ panelling stats: dbl and single curve panels, angular/distance deviations etc.
_ blind data including approx ambient light exposure, annual accumulated sun exposure etc.

shading Node (not shown in video):
uses blind data to control shading panels.

Maya and Boost: primTreeUpdate

update on minimal spanning trees videos are in real-time.
use of BOOST c++ template graph libraries within Maya plug-in, towards computing the euclidean minimal spanning tree of a set of points.The boost libraries implements both the Prim and Kruskal algorithm to compute the tree. Further, variation of the implementation is available as the Dijkstra shortest route algorithm

The lower video shows amateur attempts at implementing the algorithm using in c++ (left), in MEL (left) and a hybrid (middle).

The intention was always to achieve real time interaction, for the algorithm is useful towards path/route finding , calculating walking distances in a street network a la google maps etc. Evidently, none of the hack attempts were close to being real-time as opposed using the BOOST implementation that enables this.

Boost also includes other handy implementations to deal with graphs, and trees,statistical distributions et al.

onTheAnvil

drl unit trip

Images from collaborative design research paper with Victor Orive

_cover

_Prototype of team manifold (c) includes Maria Araya and James Warton.

WIP: branching plug-in for Maya. see previous post